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Who's your favourite from history?
Posted by meghamathur • 10/08/07 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Tags: blogging, favourite, feeds, history
Who is your favourite person from history?
It could be someone who's principles you follow in life,
or
someone who worked for your country
Or
anyone you admire from your history lessons.
Share with us, who he / she is and what is it that you admire about them.
User Comments
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HITLER
Because he was a good Bad guy-
Oh no! Is BlogCatalog going to become YouTube, where Hitler fans abound? What on earth is there to admire about Hitler?! No, that is not a serious question. Do not even bother answering it. -
markstoneman,
I'll have a shot at answering your question, just the same.
Although I deplore and abhor Chancellor Hitler's policies and philosophy, I do recognize that he was one of the great orators of the 20th century.
Hitler may have had natural abilities of self-expression, but I believe that a great deal of his success came from a serious and professional study of motion picture recordings of his speeches. I have read (sorry, can't find the source now, some 30 years later) that Hitler would carefully study techniques he used, and their effect on the audience.
It was by this sort of analytic, professional, application that he developed the characteristic rhythm and dynamics of his oratory.
In my opinion, Hitler's ability to engage large numbers of people on an emotional level was a key part of his rise to prominence.
Just in case someone started reading this in the middle: Even though I acknowledge Hitler's abilities, I do not, and can not, approve or condone his policies, or the system of belief which lay beneath them.
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Adolf Hitler, yoooooo!!!-
Another pathetic response. Are death camps a laughing matter?
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Maybe they don't believe in them. -
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With several millennia to choose from, it's hard to pick just one person.
However, Olga, regent of the Rus in Kiev, is one of the people in history for whom I have a great deal of respect.
Following the death of her husband, she ruled the Rus as regent until her son came of age. This was around the mid-900s. During her term in office, as I recall, she demonstrated significant diplomatic and administrative skill, apparently with the intention of turning over a relatively strong and stable land of the Rus to her son.
Which she did, stepping down from power when her son reached the age at which he could, legally and reasonably, take charge.
This dedication to a cause larger than oneself is, in my opinion, a very admirable trait.
I'll grant that some of her alleged actions would cause comment today. Now, a thousand years after her regency, it's considered bad form to avenge your father's killers by giving them a ship burial: while they're still alive.
However, she also made (if my memory serves) significant reforms in the tax system ('tribute' on those days), and was successful in diplomatic dealings with Byzantium - that last took some doing.
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Hitler seems to be quite a lot of people's favourite
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Based on what you asked in this thread why would anyone choose Hitler to admire? -
And what's to smile about?
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It can only come from people who were not around at the time to experience his paranoid madness.
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Amelia Earhart-She broke all boundaries and achieved success in areas that were completely new to people of her time. -
tansen-
Please share your reasons for your choice
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Did you mean the musician Emperor Akbar had among his 9 jewels???
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Charlotte Bronte-- she broke into a field where women at the time weren't really respected as authors, and actually initially published under a pseudonym to sneak in under the radar. -
I don't have any favorites, though I have some least-favorites, as you can see from my comments above.
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Being an Indian my favourite is Mahatma Gandhi who worked to free our country from the shackles of foreign rule.
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Others worked to free India too. Gandhi helped promote a specific kind of resistance, which also offered a model for the Civil Rights movement in the United States. (Martlin Luther King, Jr. followed Gandhi's peaceful methods of resistance.)
Edit: In other words, I want to suggest that Gandhi's example is bigger than Indian independence. If only more people would follow his suggestions for obtaining self-rule, instead of taking up arms. -
Yes, you are right in pointing out the fact that Gandhi wasn't alone who worked to free India. Countless people whose sacrifices haven't earned an individual mention in the history pages also contributed equally to India's freedom.
But,every successful movement has a leader whose directions shape the movement.Gandhi was one of those principle motivations in Indian freedom movement.
Indeed Gandhi's principle of 'Ahimsa' (non- violence) is the principle the world needs to opt to.It's the need of the hour -
The larger point I was trying to make is that Gandhi was not just a great figure in Indian history, but in world history. That's why I brought in the American example too.
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Gandhi was a wife-beating, reactionary, intolerant moron. No offense.
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I got your point stoneman
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Napoleon & Margaret Thatcher.
Both exhibited great leadership and strength. -
I'm at a loss in deciding among three. Nikola Tesla, Alfred Nobel, and Fritz Haber.
Tesla just amazes me. His inventiveness and creativity brought the early science of electrical engineering to something akin to fine art.
Nobel, because his invention of stabilized high explosives made possible so many of the engineering feats of the early 20th century like the Panama and Suez canals, Hover Dam, and so much more. The fact that it also gave us better methods to blow each other up in war is obviously a drawback.
Fritz Haber's development of a method for large scale production of synthetic nitrates that divorced the production of fertilizers and explosives from the ecological rape of Chile that was the norm prior to that. His invention allowed food production to increase many times over all around the world and staved off a possible Malthusian crisis in the early 2oth century. He's also recognized as the "Father of Chemical Warfare" for his pioneering work in the delivery of chlorine gas in World War I. His team also developed the insecticide Zyklon B that was later used in the gas chambers in the Nazi concentration camp (while he was in exile for being Jewish). (pssst, Mark, you knew Hitler would find its way into this.)
So many people in history have both good and bad points since they were, after all, just humans.-
Thanks techfun for sharing the info
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This is a hard question - shame on anyone who said hitler...
I'm probably going to think of more later, but I've always admired James Connolly and Martin Luther King. They both believed in a better way of living and took chances to make their cause be heard. Somebody said Charlotte Bronte, I have to agree with that too although for different reasons than my first two choices. -
Abraham Lincoln. For only having about 1 year of actual schooling in his life, He wrote some of the most memorable speeches in history. He taught himself and aspired to be more than just a railsplitter.-
racist, dictatorial...
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Winston Churchill - History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.-
murdering, inept, reactionary tosser...
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john lennon -
Lucy. I know, who is Lucy? Up until recently Lucy was the first known human remains and she resides in the Cleveland Natural History Museum. As a child I visited her often. -
People like Rosa Parks. If it wasn't for people like her, I being white, probably would not have met some of my very close friends, who are black.-
good call.. common people doing the right thing...
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Michaelangelo, Plato, Buddha -
One more: we don't know who this person was, but we all owe a great deal to whoever invented string.
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'Tis true! LOL
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MFK Fisher, Auguste Escoffier, Alice B. Toklas or Albert Einstein.
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MLK, RFK, Dahlia Lama, Ben Franklin, N.C. Wyeth, Wyatt Earp, Bram Stoker, Philip K. Dick, Mark Twain, Howard Hughes, Jeremiah Springfield.
Too many things to list about what they accomplished, but none of them gave up. Except Jeremiah... maybe? -
Reagan - may not have been the sharpest president, but he was exactly what we needed following the peanut farmer.
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Reagan was awesome for the moment, but not the greatest in history. Gorbachev is above Reagan.
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Martin Luther-
you mean the vicious anti-Semite genocidal ruling class lackey?
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He must have been those things, or you would not make the accusation.
Still, good call standing up to the Roman Catholic Church.
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I would like to meet Suetonius for a few minutes. -
i guess this is one of those questions when we get to show off our intellect. so i'm thinking it's the person who thought that steamin' clams was a worthwhile endeavor, and then i'd have to say that jesus fellow (even though i'm an atheist by nature). -
William Wallace and Karl Marx.
Ben-
Marx's analysis of how society works is awesome... Marx got a bad name in the US as a result of the commie scare of the cold war. Too bad. Now we are stuck with dorks like Alan Greenspan to tell us how the economy works.
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Father Junipero Serra because he had a special relationship with all animals. -
Agustin Barrios Mangore...First guitarist to make recordings!
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John Lennon-
noooo....
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John Lennon is a great choice. All we are saying is give peace a chance.
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Harry Roberts
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@Daniel: Where do I begin with all your remarks above? You're actually funny in your extremism, so I'll let it slide.
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I'd be more interested in your views as a historian. Extremist I may be but dupe I'm not.
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Robert the Bruce - he is our ancestor and Bruce is still in the family name - well for the boys anyway.-
oy to the Scots! :-)
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Comicus...he was the best stand-up philosopher... -
Hard to pick one, but I will go with Queen Elizabeth or Frederick Douglass, or... Spartacus, the slave who raised an army against Rome. Winston Churchill is pretty awesome. Abraham Lincoln is special too.
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